The Underworld eBook

“I hae been thinkin’, Nellie,” he
began nervously, “that I could tak’ Rob
in wi’ me. Ye see, I ha’e no callans
o’ my ain, and I ha’e aye to get yin to
draw off me. So, gin ye’re agreeable, I
could tak’ Rob, an’ I’ll be guid
to him. He can come an’ be my neighbor,
an’ as he’ll hae to get work in ony case,
he micht as weel work wi’ me as wi’ ony
ither body. Forby I’ll maybe be able to
pay him mair than plenty ithers could pay him, an’
that is efter a’ the point to be maist considered.
What do ye think?”

But Mrs. Sinclair could not think; she merely indicated
to him that he might please himself and make his own
arrangements with the boy, which Andrew did, and Robert
went to work with him the following week. He was
a mass of nerves and was horribly afraid—­indeed,
this fear never left him for years—­but,
young as he was, he recognized his responsibility,
to his mother and the rest of the family. He was
now its head, and had to shoulder the burden of providing
for it, and so his will drove him to work in the pit,
when his soul revolted at the very thought of it.
Always the horror of the tragedy was with him, down
to its smallest detail; and sometimes, even at work,
when his mind wandered for a moment from his immediate
task, he would start up in terror, almost crying out
again as he had done on the day of the accident.

Andrew kept his word and was good to the boy now in
his care. Indeed, he took, as some said, more
care of the boy than if Robert had been his own, for
he tried to save him from every little detail that
might remind him of the accident.

“That’s yours, Robin,” he said,
when pay-day came, as he handed to the boy the half
of the pay earned.

“Would she no’?” replied Andrew.
“But you are the heid o’ the hoose, Robin,
sae just tak’ it hame, an’ lay it down
on the dresser-head. We are doin’ gey weel
the noo, an’ forby, ye’re workin’
for it. Noo run awa’ hame wi’t, an’
dinna say ocht to yir mither, but just put it doon
on the dresser-head.” And so the partnership
began which was to last for many years.

About this time there happened one of those tremendous
upheavals, long remembered in the industrial world,
the great Scottish Miners’ Strike of 1894.
The trade union movement was growing and fighting,
and every tendency pointed to the fact that a clash
of forces was inevitable. The previous year had
seen the English miners beaten after a protracted
struggle. They had come out for an increase in
wages, and whilst it was recognized that they had
been beaten and forced to go back to work suffering
wholesale reductions, yet a newer perspective was beginning
to appear to the miners of Scotland.

“We’ll never be able to beat the maisters,”
said Tam Donaldson, when the cloud first appeared
upon the industrial horizon. “The English
strike gied us a lesson we shouldna forget.”